


Intangibles That Carry Tangible Weight

by leinthalexandra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Depression, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Slash, Suicidal Ideation, self-harm ideation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leinthalexandra/pseuds/leinthalexandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly he just wanted all of this to stop, wanted everything to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> High school AU, Dean’s dealing with depression but he doesn’t quite know what it is. Warning for vague suicidal ideation, depression, ideation of self-harming, and maladaptive/irrational thinking that could possibly be seen as character bashing but is rather due to an unreliable narrator. ~2000 words. Title inspired by a line from “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien.
> 
> Author's Note: a lot of this is derived from my own personal experiences with depression, hence why I decided to write this as a "coping fic," of a sort. My intent is not to offend anyone, but rather to relate some of the experiences of people with depression from someone who has first-hand experience with it, as well as being in the field of psychology. That is not to say that this encompasses the experiences of everyone who has had depression but hopefully this is at least a decent portrayal. That being said, this is not a happy fic, but I hope that people read it and--if not enjoy it, per se, can at least find something here. (possibly a spoiler, but I should say that I tend to write angsty fics with happy or quasi-happy endings, if that helps anything.)
> 
> If you feel that I have gotten something wrong, or if I have offended anyone, please let me know and I will do my best to correct it. Please look at the warnings because I do not want to inadvertently trigger anyone.

Dean was used to getting up at six every morning. School started at eight-thirty, but his mom had trained him well to try to always be awake and ready and alert well before then (regardless of how little he sometimes applied himself in his classes). But the past few weeks had seen him dragging himself out of bed an hour later than usual, closer and closer to seven-thirty every day. His body was sluggish and unresponsive, making it difficult for him to want to open his eyes, preferring instead to roll back over and hide under the covers.

His little brother, Sam, had taken to yanking the blankets away and refusing to let Dean grab them back, leaving Dean no choice but to get out of bed. Weirdly enough as well, he didn’t even have the energy to tease his brother or engage in their typical back-and-forth sniping at one another. Instead he just shot Sam a half-hearted glare and grabbed whatever clean clothes were left from what his mom had hung up in his closet, trudging into the bathroom. He didn’t even stand up in the shower anymore; it made him light-headed and exhausted to expend the energy.

Walking through his morning routine was like being caught in a daze, as if he wasn’t even really there. It was more like someone had replaced Dean with a clone, or a doppelganger, or an android replica like they did on the sixth season of  _Buffy_ , but Dean’s…consciousness was still attached to the thing’s sensory input whatevers, but he was just completely detached. Distantly he heard his mom ask if he was okay, and he nodded automatically, forcing himself to look up at her and grin. The energy he needed to push his muscles into the right shape was worth it when he saw the worry melt away from her expression.

Guilt churned up in his stomach as he took his dishes over to the sink and started cleaning up. He didn’t lie to his mom; it was one of only a few rules she’d ever needed to set down with him and Sammy. But not telling her about it, about this…whatever it was, this thing eating away at his insides like he’d swallowed acid, felt like lying. But the fear of what she’d say, if she’d get angry at him (and his mom almost never, ever got angry with him, but it didn’t matter, this might make her pissed off enough to start shouting at him and he couldn’t handle that, he knew he couldn’t), kept him silent.

He pulled the soft, grey hoodie over his head, the material of the too-large sweatshirt nearly swallowing him up. Dean didn’t care. He hated to admit it, even in his own head, but he didn’t care about a lot of things anymore. It made him sick to his stomach because if he could barely muster up the fucking energy to care about Sam, or his mom, then what the hell was wrong with him?

He grabbed his backpack before giving his mom a kiss goodbye. A little warmth returned to him when she gave him a hug and ruffled his hair, but it was lost somewhere between the garage door and the Impala, his bag trailing after him and skimming against the ground. Sam was already waiting for him in the passenger seat, giving him an unreadable look. It probably didn’t mean anything good.

“What’s wrong with you?” Sam asked. The kid was only thirteen, but he was still too damn smart for his own good. Dean sighed, but didn’t answer, too busy using whatever brainpower he could muster up to concentrate on backing the Impala out of the driveway. It was only when they were on the main road heading out of the subdivision that he even thought to respond.

“I’m fine, Sam,” he said. “Just tired, that’s all.” He wanted to tell his brother, though. Tell him, _Sam, I am so very, very, very, very tired_. Tell him about how he could barely keep his head up and focus on driving, how he didn’t care about anything he used to love—not watching TV, not finding endless movie trivia on the internet, not working on the Impala for hours on the weekends, nothing. Or how Dean was pretty fucking sure he was heading for a breakdown soon, endless crying and shaking and sobbing and all of that embarrassing shit included. He hated crying, hated how it sapped away everything from him and made his head hurt.

He wanted to get through a day, just one damn day, where he didn’t want to break into mom’s liquor cabinet and drink himself into a coma because he hated himself, hated everything, so damn much. He couldn’t look in a mirror half the time either, wanted to break his fist on the glass or somehow reach through and pull a  _Fight Club_  move on himself. Everything he did or said was another weight dropped down on him, and Dean didn’t know how to even begin to explain it all to his brother.

So he didn’t. He just forced himself to grin, to laugh a little, to say something that would (hopefully) put Sam at ease. Dean’s whole body wanted to collapse in on itself when Sam returned his smile.

—

School was torture. Dean had never been a great student at the best of times, but he’d at least enjoyed some of his English classes and science and all that. But now he just sat in his too-small desk, hiding at the back of the room behind some of his taller classmates, resting his head on his desk and just trying to breathe.

He could see it, though, see the way Ms. Rosen looked at him with that irritated glare. She probably hated him. Not like she didn’t have a reason; he was a pretty awful student. He never turned his assignments in on time, or sometimes even at all. He did like  _Brave New World_ , though, he really did, but he just couldn’t focus on the words swimming in front of him, when all he really wanted to do was pull his hood up and sleep.

After what seemed like hours the bell finally rang, and Dean tried to gather his things quickly (not that he’d taken much out of his backpack in the first place) before Ms. Rosen could turn that stare on him again. He accidentally glanced at her on his way out the door, though, and she looked worried. Unsure. Dean let himself be carried out into the hallway by the wave of students trying to get to their next classes.

He stopped by his locker, intending to drop off his books and pick up what he needed for his Chem class, but he just…stopped. Dean stared at the inside of his locker, at the books resting on the little shelf thing his mom had bought him freshman year. His backpack rested against his leg where he’d dropped it on the floor (or did it slip out of his grip? he can’t really remember, everything’s all fogged up). Suddenly he wished he had something painful, something sharp, something he could use to hurt himself and try to get himself to feel  _something_. He’d tried cutting a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t done anything and he’d given up after the first time. Mostly he just wanted all of this to stop, wanted everything to stop.

“Dean?”

There was a hand on his shoulder, and turning around he saw his best friend, Cas, standing way too close (like usual, but Dean didn’t care, not really). Most people couldn’t read Cas, not like Dean could, and he could see that Cas’s expression was one of concern. Dean tried to muster up his grin again, but it fell away almost at once because he knew Cas could tell it wasn’t real.

“Hey, Cas.” Dean turned to his locker, pulling his books off the shelf and stuffing them into his backpack to replace the ones he returned to the locker before slamming the metal door shut. “What’s up?”

Cas didn’t say anything but he did tilt his head a little, not too far over, just enough so that his usually messy dark hair flopped over to one side as much as it could. Dean  hated that he wanted to run his fingers through it. He hated that the way he felt about Cas was still all caught up inside him somewhere, trapped in the stringy knotted parts of his insides and were stuck in there while this  _thing_  took him over and made him feel like he was rotting away. He had the sudden urge to scream.

“You’re…” Cas trailed off. They were neither of them very good with words, but Dean knew what Cas meant. “Did something happen?”

He couldn’t tell Cas, especially not now. Cas might be his best friend but Dean couldn’t ask him to put up with Dean’s bullshit. Dean didn’t deserve friends, or anyone, and he just wanted to go hide in his room and sleep for a week or a month, maybe a year. Plus they were in the middle of a crowded hallway, in the middle of the school day, and Dean couldn’t say anything here. It was too open, too exposed. He glanced out the windows on the side of the exit doors nearby—rain lashed against the windows and the sky was almost as dark as night. Dean could feel himself wanting to sink into the floor.

“Nah, nothing happened. I’m good. Just…didn’t get enough sleep last night.” He shrugged. “You want to come over after school?”

 _Please say no, please say yes, please say no, no please say yes…_ Dean didn’t know what he wanted more.

Cas looked at him, really looked, and Dean swore it was how he probably could read Dean’s mind. “I’m busy this afternoon,” he said. “Anna has some kind of…meeting. She’s making me go as well, but I think she just doesn’t want to have to go by herself. I’m sorry.”

Dean’s chest tightened at the same time that he breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s fine, no worries, man. We’ll hang out this weekend though, for sure, right?”

Cas nodded. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you in U.S. History later, all right?” Somehow Dean had managed to get into the AP class with Cas. In all honesty it was probably only because of Cas that he’d done so, and gotten into the AP World History class the year before—not to mention making a 3 on the exam. He wasn’t smart enough to have passed on his own.

“Yeah, I’ll catch you later, Cas.” He walked away from his friend and towards the science wing, feeling like his legs and feet were filling with lead at every step.

—

The rest of the day passed by, moving too slowly and yet in a complete blur all at once. Dean didn’t even realize he was getting into the Impala until he’d unlocked the door and slid into the driver’s seat, almost about to drive off when he thought,  _fuck, where’s Sam?_

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket but it slipped through his hand too quickly; fumbling for it, Dean swore loudly when it fell in the gap between the driver’s seat. His hand was too big to fit, so he unbuckled his seat belt and shuffled himself down into the floor under the steering wheel. After a good few minutes of maneuvering he managed to grab the damn thing and drag himself back into the driver’s seat. Looking at the phone, Dean saw he had a text message. It was from Sam.

_Don’t wait up, I’ve got a model UN meeting after school and Jess said her parents would give me a ride home. Be careful driving, jerk._

Dean threw his phone in the backseat and took off, choking down the tears that threatened to pour from his eyes. He needed to get out, to get back home so he could hide from everything and pretend that this wasn’t happening. There was nothing to cause this, no sudden bad thing in his life that he could blame for feeling like his entire world was crumbling into pieces around him. And it scared the fuck out of him.


	2. Chapter 2

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have NOT forgotten this fic, I swear, and this note is a placeholder because it's gonna be updated hopefully today or within the week. I'm so very, very sorry it's taken this long (almost a year oh man), but I will update very soon! If you're still hanging around, you're pretty fucking amazing. I tried to update several times over the last year but things just always seemed to get in the way. Anyway, just posting this as a "chapter placeholder" so that any subscribers or any such will see this. :3 Thank you guys so much for hanging in there, and I feel terrible that I've been such a slowpoke.

-leinthalexandra


End file.
